Modeling Uncertainty Helps MIT's Drone Zip Around Obstacles

As the drone moves forward, it takes a continuous sequence of depth sensor snapshots (at something like 30 Hz, depending on the sensor), represented by the gray triangles* above. See that little curvy blue line? Let’s say that’s the trajectory that you want the drone to fly along next. To get to the first point in that trajectory (the red dot in the second diagram from left), the drone has a good enough view of what’s going on from right where it is. But to plan farther ahead, the drone needs information about areas outside of the current field of view of its depth sensor. NanoMap then starts looking backwards through its collection of snapshots, until it finds one that shows the area it needs to plan into. If it can’t find a good snapshot, then it’ll have to slow down and look around a bit, but if it does find one, it has the information it needs to move much more aggress...